This week, Mrs. Rieux and I will be joining millions of our fellow Americans heading toward Washington, D.C., to see our forty-fourth President--my former law school professor--inaugurated. I'd like to record the events of the next several days in diaries; even if no one reads them, at least I'll have a nice scrapbook.
But if you're interested in following along as two Obama volunteers take a trip to the Inauguration and points beyond, read on....
Day 0: Minneapolis, Minnesota to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
We all made this journey for a reason. It's humbling, but in my heart I know you didn't come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that's shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect union.
That's the journey we're on today.
Like so many other Kossacks, Mrs. Rieux and I, joined by her Obamaniac sister and mother, spent a large portion of 2008 as enthusiastic volunteers for Barack Obama's campaign--phone banking, canvassing, doing what we could to get out the vote. (We now know the neighborhoods of North and "Nordeast" Minneapolis vastly better than we did a year ago.) Happily, the raucous crowd of organizers and volunteers we were a part of were able to deliver Minnesota for Barack on February's Super Tuesday. Then, after we rode the ups and downs of caucuses and primaries and more primaries, we got to be there in St. Paul on a happy evening in June when Barack celebrated his victory in the race for the Democratic nomination. Summer passed, our proudly liberal Cities survived the invasion of annoying Republican Conventioners during Labor Day week, and then the Rieuxs and my sister- and mother-in-law spent much of September and October stomping up and down the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, turning out the vote for my ol' prof.
At ten p.m. Central on November 4, Mrs. Rieux and I were among the happy mob of DFLers crammed into a hotel ballroom in St. Paul celebrating the election of Barack Obama as our forty-fourth President. (We then stayed up in the ballroom with our trusty cellular-modem-enabled MacBook Pro until five in the morning; we were the lone news source for the dwindling number of celebrants who were tracking some crazy local race for Congress that stubbornly refused to resolve itself. Whatever happened in that one, anyway?)
Over the next week, the two of us are connecting our Washington stay to visits with friends in southern states, turning the trip into a nine-day swing through the Southeast. A jaunt to someplace nice and warm is an annual January ritual for us (Mrs. Rieux grew up in significantly warmer climes, so she extracted this concession in return for agreeing to move to chilly Minneapolis), although this week's D.C. forecast isn't exactly putting a smile on the missus' face at the moment.
The plan, in short: last night we flew from the Land of 10,000 Lakes to beautiful Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Thank you, Priceline!) Today we steer the one-day-rental car toward Washington, by way of (1) Gettysburg--I hear some lawyer guy from Illinois gave a nice speech there once--and then (2) the home of friends of ours on the Maryland side of the D.C. area.
Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday will see us immersed in the grand gathering, the convening of so many of us who feel moved (and, we have to add, can materially afford) to come and witness this momentous event.
On Wednesday, the Rieuxs take off for Atlanta, Georgia, home of 106-year-old voter and Obama victory speech heroine Ann Nixon Cooper. We'll visit a grad-school classmate of Mrs. Rieux's and see what the burgeoning metropolis has to offer.
Finally, on Friday evening we take a shuttle bus from Atlanta to Birmingham, Alabama, where we'll find both the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the home of the guy who was the best man at our 2006 wedding. After a weekend of exploration of "the Pittsburgh of the South," we'll board a plane back to the frigid Twin Cities.
This promises to be an exciting and inspiring journey; I hope you'll come along.